


piano hands

by mercrueltio



Category: Original Work
Genre: Class Differences, Internal Monologue, M/M, Original Character(s), Other, Private School, Unresolved Emotional Tension, no bradshaw is not named after what you think he's named after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 14:03:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14238858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercrueltio/pseuds/mercrueltio
Summary: that awkward moment when the cute boy you're tutoring tells you you have nice hands and you want to jump off a bridge





	piano hands

**Author's Note:**

> this is a piece i've worked on for a long time and it's at a point where i'm satisfied with it... so here it is.

When Hamilton Bradshaw entered Warwick Academy without his sunglasses and thirty-two ounce water on a crisp Friday morning in late November, many students assumed ─ with vague sense of surprise ─ that the boy skipped his usual Thursday binge and came to school without a hangover. I was doubtful, especially with the way he kept pressing his thumbs into his clammy temple and sinking further into his chair like it was settling into wet concrete.

Our hour long tutoring session was weekly, miserable, and involved the least amount of learning possible. It was what Hamilton liked to call ‘school-ordered’ tutoring. This past August, at the start of our junior year, the Bradshaws had been called in and talked themselves into a compromise with the Dean that dealt with ‘taking care’ of Hamilton’s behaviors. I didn’t know if this meeting was after the time he puked during class or the time he decided to get high in the bathroom, but the ultimate verdict was that tutoring would be the first step in his own special ‘program’ to get him back on track. I was chosen as the lucky tutor because I just happened to have the second-highest grades in our class. I don’t know if I would’ve accepted the honor if the school hadn’t offered to pay me a small tutoring fee. Prior to actually meeting one-on-one with Hamilton, I’d always thought he was either another rich slacker wasting his parent’s endless money, an overall fuck-up, or a combination of the two. I had learned to ignore my previous speculations after our hours together, but on days like today I found myself retreating back to my old assumptions.

Our usual spot was upstairs, enclosed on two sides by dark wooden bookshelves so tall that they nearly brushed the ceiling. There was one table per space between the shelves along the second floor and each was accompanied by four chairs, all of which were upholstered with an excessive amount of cushioning and signature ‘Warwick Green’ fabric. Our table happened to be nestled in the foreign language section which was overfilled with musty, outdated volumes of lexicons and copies of untranslated novels. Opposite from the wall behind us was a wide, tall window that illuminated most corners of the library and looked out over the tailored lawn at the center of campus.

I tried to focus the best I could on my own textbook as Hamilton sat on his phone. I wasn’t supposed to be reading my own textbook, of course, but Hamilton hadn’t even bothered to open his bag once he sat down. He had only tossed his topcoat over the back of the adjacent chair and glanced at me with pursed lips before looking down to his phone. I stole glances at his screen when I could, but I only caught glimpses of him replying to a message or swiping through photos of people I doubted I would ever know. Whatever he was engaged with, I figured it wasn’t important enough to be wasting my time. The sound of his nails on the screen was starting to wear down my nerves and make the back of my neck itch with irritation. There was usually some level of white noise filtering through the vast, donor-sponsored library as students typed up papers and sipped their cups of coffee, but the proximity of the other boy made the light drumming of his fingers a problem.

I exhaled through my teeth.

“Did you plan on working on your assignments today or not?” I asked, shutting my own textbook and holding my place with my thumb. I tried to come off as snide to counter Hamilton’s indifference ─ the words rolled off my tongue like they were made of lead.

I always tried hard to focus and reign in on the edges of my accent as I spoke. The low vowels and dropped consonants were not uncommon throughout Boston as a whole, but in the halls of Warwick they could be telltale. The majority of students there grew up around parents who had the voices of newscasters and politicians. Accentless and appeasing, easy to follow and listen to. Embarrassingly, I had spent the summer before my first year at Warwick practicing my speech patterns with my younger brother Sam who always laughed at me, despite sitting through it.

“Richard,” Sam would say. “You’re sort of starting to sound like a rich bitch.”

Eventually, I found myself being able to fake my way through formal speeches and presentations that I had practiced beforehand, but I learned that casual conversation was a different trial entirely.

Hamilton turned his eyes towards me, looking up through blond lashes. I thought his pupils looked halfway dilated, but I tucked my observations in the back of my mind. Both our mouths were set straight, unwavering, in a moment of tense silence. I feared I might be the first to break as I worried the inside of my cheek and felt the corner of my lip itching into a frown, but then Hamilton rolled his eyes and moved to place his phone face down on the table.

“We could try doing some English, I guess,” he said. He sniffed while smoothing out his buttoned shirt and picking at the hem of the collar. I was only half-satisfied with his decision, but I begrudgingly accepted it. We both knew English was the subject he could breeze through with a minimal amount of effort. I sighed and moved to put away my own book.

 

#

 

My first tutoring session with Hamilton was brief and the only positive thing to come from it was that I was being paid per session, not per hour.

Hamilton was late enough that, after becoming absorbed in trying to grasp a French novel I pulled from the shelf beside me, I found myself startled when he scraped a chair back from the table to sit. He sat his bag and coat on the table, but kept a hand resting on them like he was already expecting to stand back up again and leave at any moment. I wasn’t too far off.

“You’re Richard Scott, right?” I knew even by that point, he really didn’t care if I was myself or not.

“Yes,” I said. “Nice to actually meet you. I think we’ve had a few classes together.”

When I put my hand out for him to shake, he blinked slowly a few times before he glanced at the book in my hand and sneered.

“Enchanté.”

He still didn’t move to take my hand. I bit hard at the inside of my cheek.

The chirp of a text tone from his phone broke the excruciating moment between us and we both glanced towards the sound. Hamilton snatched up the device to shield its screen from me and I turned my gaze to stare vacantly at the spot on the table where his phone had previously sat. Embarrassed, I tried to fake an intent interest in the grain of the table’s wood as Hamilton typed and sent out a message. I only looked up when I heard him slide back his chair far enough to knock into the shelf behind him.

“I’m leaving.”

I frowned at him. “Are you serious? You didn’t even open your bag.”

“Wanna come?” He replied as an afterthought, unphased and putting the bag in question back over his shoulder as he stood. At that point, I felt such disbelief that I laughed. It was Hamilton’s turn to frown, his dark eyebrows knitting themselves together above the bridge of his nose.

“Not really, no.” I said, my mouth thin.

“Fine,” Hamilton said in a sharp, hot tone that implied the contrary. He began to walk away. “See you next week. Or not. Whichever, I don’t care.”

 

#

 

It took us some time to divvy out how the books and assignments should lay between us. A literature textbook eventually found its way to the corner of the table where we could read it from equally awkward angles. Some part of me was glad that Hamilton was at least willing to humor me as I dived into a full-fledged mini-lecture about how the syntax of Beowulf indicated a change in Anglo-Saxon culture. He feigned attention through leaning in to rest his chin on alternating fists or writing notes by scribbling the same word over and over on the loose leaf in front of him until the letters became illegible. He occasionally asked me to repeat what I had just said, despite the fact he had been staring right at me and I knew he was listening.

The most frustrating thing was that I knew he was smart and that he just wasn’t trying ─ he was bored. Whenever we worked on his French homework, he’d answer a question before I could even fully stumble through translating it for myself. Sometimes he’d interrupt me, looking up from his phone to simply say: “Yeah, I know this shit already.”

He liked linguistics, I figured out eventually. He’d been to Europe ‘a few times’ and had apparently decided to just ‘pick up bits and pieces of a few languages’ during his travels. It was obnoxious when he actually proved how much he knew. I knew the only reason we worked on his language assignments was because otherwise, he wouldn’t care to get them done on his own time.

Prior to our sessions, most of my knowledge about Hamilton came from what I overheard from other students and what I’d seen of him at parties. Most people considered him an idiot because of the lack of effort he put into school. I primarily thought of him as a loner, due to the fact he didn’t seem to have many friends, if any at all. At least he and I had that in common.

Despite being friendless, he still went to plenty of parties. I knew Hamilton fit the type of a party-goer, but I never understood why he chose to go to the ones populated with half the student body that he had no interest in knowing. Wyatt Emsworth was the most popular host of these parties and even I knew that Hamilton hated him: his voice, his look, and every other aspect of his being. I didn’t care much for Emsworth or his parties either, but whenever I was invited and had time off of work, I found myself going anyway.

Hamilton had been at the same party that I got pushed into the pool. He was one of the few not laughing by the time I surfaced and pulled myself out of the water, wet t-shirt and jacket clinging to me like wet paper. He instead chose to scowl at Emsworth before knocking back the rest of his drink and slipping inside the house to probably pour another. He’s never brought it up with me when we’ve been alone, but I think he might have been too drunk to even remember it was me who had been pushed.

Distracted as I turned the next page in the textbook, the pad of my thumb caught on the corner and left a papercut. I nursed it on my bottom lip to subside the sting and Hamilton shifted further in his seat towards me, suddenly interested.

“Hey, Richard. Do you play piano?”

I pulled my thumb away from my mouth. Half of me was surprised by the irrelevance of the question, and the other half was surprised he chose to even call me by my first name. I placed my hands flat on the table, suddenly wishing they were gone. When I looked down, I was faced with a distasteful depiction of Grendel on the page in front of me. His arms and legs were painted in greasy hairs that looked like long, thin eels protruding from his skin. I looked at the back of my own hands, covered in thick, brown hairs. Confidence was not my strong suit and my mind couldn’t help but to make the comparison between the body hair that snaked up my own arms and Grendel’s ugly black hairs that covered his body. My frown deepened.

“I had a lesson once, when I was a younger,” I replied and curled my hands into loose fists. My knuckles poked out like misshapen hills of bone and the thought just made me think again of Grendel’s spine showing through his skin, so I laid them back flat.

My parents had gotten me the piano lesson as a birthday present in middle school after I expressed an interest in learning about music. I was a quick learner, the instructor had commented to my parents when they picked me up, but when Sam got sick, I didn’t get to go back. I eventually gave up on the idea.

Hamilton, unaware of my thoughts, took my hand into his own and inspected it without saying a word. I couldn’t really find anything to say to him either. He examined my knuckles and I took my chance to watch his face as he did. His jaw was sharp, but the rest of his face was soft where other edges should have been. A piece of blond hair had fallen over his eyes when he tilted his head down. He outlined the hard angles of my bent fingers with his brown eyes before flipping my hand over to view the lines sculpted into my palm. I was struck with the idea that he looked like a palm reader about to tell me when I would find true love or when I would die. I almost laughed at the thought, but I was tense from the moment the other boy had touched me.  
I wanted to ask the what and the why of his intentions, but I couldn’t get any words out of my mouth. For one thing, he was gentler with my hand than I expected him to be, like I had a hand made of sculpted glass and he thought he might drop it. When Hamilton ran his thumb through the hairs on the backside of my hand, I felt my stomach drop. Despite the attention the other boy was paying to me, I felt disgusting.

“I think you should try playing again. You have the hands for it,” Hamilton said. His tone was museful, but the words felt loaded, heavy. “Maybe violin. You’ve got tough fingertips. I doubt you’d bleed too much.”

When Hamilton looped his hand around my wrist to hold my hand steady, I couldn’t calm my nerves enough to keep my heartbeat from jumping out from under the thin skin of my wrist and into his palm. His straight mouth didn’t react in a way that showed he noticed my cascading pulse, but I doubted he didn’t feel it surging under his touch. He sniffed intermittently in his silence like his nose itched, but didn’t let go of me to scratch it. It seemed he would much rather be holding my hand.

Despite it all, I still felt distracted and ashamed. The other boy could speak so carelessly about managing to afford excess, luxury expenses. My cheeks grew hot and the insides of my ears felt as though there was lava funneling through them. I fumbled for a reply, desperate to say something to bring Hamilton closer to my reality. About how my family didn’t have the money for anything even close to music lessons and trips out of the country. That I worked two jobs to help my parents pay Sam’s medical bills because chemo was so costly. How I had little to no time for fun between school and work and when I worked up the courage to attend things like parties, no one noticed I was there. Using my voice felt like swallowing hard around a rock caught halfway down my throat and I stumbled over my reasoning until I gave up. “I can’t.”

“Shame,” Hamilton replied, his eyes half-lidded as he finally let go. When he pulled our hands apart, the roughened callous of my thumb swept along his softer palm. A hand without the wear of work.

I nodded without thinking, agreeing with the word. Hamilton’s assumptions had created an ache on my tongue that twisted itself like a rag, leaving bitterness dripping down the back of my throat. It wasn’t something unfamiliar. My position at Warwick was seated solely in my academic work ethic that had granted me a scholarship. I rarely interacted with the handful of other students who were attending through the same means. Sometimes I thought I should make an effort to talk to them, that I’d relate to them more. There might be camaradiere found in being looked down on by half the student body for using ‘free money’, but seeing as I wasn’t much for socializing, I didn’t seek anyone out.

The rest of Warwick’s students attended as legacies or because their parents had enough money to throw around and pay tuition. They rarely considered individual circumstances outside of their own, especially beyond a surface level. The bolder students tended to prey on those they deemed less desirable. On one occasion, Wyatt Emsworth confronted me, with what I assumed was malicious intent, about the jacket I was wearing. It was a tweed I had gotten from a thrift store, but it was still in decent condition and appeared tailored to my shape. After seeing me walk into the room, he turned around in his seat and interrogated me about the brand and what store I had gotten it from. I cautiously pieced together the jacket’s background, plugging in details from stolen conversations I’d overheard of other classmates’ shopping sprees.

“I used to play viola, in like, elementary school,” Hamilton spoke up again, tearing me away from my thoughts. I was half surprised he didn’t just go back to his phone after our moment. We typically didn’t talk this much ─ about school, life, or anything for that matter. I figured today was just turning out to be a rare day.

“I didn’t know you cared so much about music,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t, actually,” Hamilton leaned forward again and I thought that he almost grinned. “There’s a reason I said ‘used to.’ What were you saying about money? You were practically whispering.”

I cleared my throat, only somewhat ready to try again to explain. I was vulnerable like this. It was rare for anyone to show a honest interest in my life and what I had to say. The tension between us felt less obvious now that we weren’t in the middle of intense hand holding, but the air between us still felt potent.

“I don’t have the money to just pay for things like piano lessons because I feel like it. My family prioritizes house and family expenses over everything else and I have to contribute to that. That's just how it works. I really only get to save the extra money that doesn’t get eaten up by bills. And then I spend that money trying to keep up appearances around people like you.” I paused, having blurted out the last sentence. “Maybe if I ‘tutored’ you more I could afford it.”

I meant the last bit as a joke in attempt to distract from the rest of what I had said, but Hamilton just looked at me with the corners of his lips turned down and leaned forward.

“How often do you work?”

I frowned back at him. “Typically every day except Tuesday and Thursday because I have Student Government until eight.”

Hamilton rolled his eyes, like I’d offended him by even mentioning extracurriculars.

“That’s unfortunate. Having to spend hours of your days off listening to Emsworth be a bossy bitch.”

I laughed.

“Anyway, that’s ridiculous,” he said, unfazed by my laughter. “No wonder you never show up at parties anymore. You probably work more than you sleep at this point, right?”

I didn’t really know whether to be more confused over the fact Hamilton was attempting to sympathize with me or that he even remembered me from parties in his plastered states. The attention had me shifting deeper into my seat. I crossed my arms over my chest while I tried to dissolve into the chair.

“I guess so, yeah,” I said. My cheeks felt warm again. Hamilton leaned in further. “Going to parties never really felt right to me anyway. I don’t know if they’re just boring or what. I guess after leaving multiple times with my clothes soaking wet, its hard to reminisce about all the fun I’ve had.”

“Emsworth sucks ass ─ literally. His parties do too. You should start coming again, though, when you can. Hang out with me instead of lingering around the edges like it’s some kind of school dance, maybe. I don’t know. I could pick you up, if you wanted.”

After his last offer, Hamilton leaned away from me into his chair and picked once again at the hem of his collar. As far as I could see, there wasn’t anything to pick off of it.

The invitation from Hamilton made us feel too close. Like whatever defined our relationship was being tested for the first time and I didn’t like that. I realized how taut the muscles at the back of my neck were and I shifted, trying to ease the tension. All it did was make the cords of my neck tighter.

“I don’t know. Maybe one day when I have the night off.” My words felt hollow and with the way Hamilton’s jaw tightened, I could tell they felt the same to him too. I adjusted my glasses, ran a hair through my dark hair, and straightened my back. My shoulders cracked up to where they met the base of my neck and I winced.

“Cool, just let me know. Whenever.” His words were cold, like my response was something typical. I thought about retracting my answer and trying again, but the moment had passed.

A few minutes of silence passed between us and I shuffled the papers lying on the table instead of looking at Hamilton. I felt his eyes on me occasionally, despite the fact had picked his phone off the table. I half expected him to leave at any moment.

“Can I ask you something?”

When I looked up, he was staring, focusing his eyes on me like I was a puzzle and the only way to solve me was to understand the shape and color of every piece. I nodded, my lips dry.

“Why do you try so hard?”

I tensed. “What do you mean?”

“Its not that hard of a question,” Hamilton said. He sounded like he was trying not to snap at me, but I still felt it seeping into my skin. “You just seem to put so much effort into everything and you still don’t seem that happy.”

“I am happy, for the most part,” I said, consciously lying. I was so many things ─ ambitious, exacting, lonely ─ that happy didn’t usually make the list. “I just get stressed out, well, a lot. I put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to school, family, and...everything else.”

“Oh,” Hamilton leaned inward again, his frustration seeming to dissolve in an instant as his interest was piqued. “I get it.”

I raised both my eyebrows. “How could you ‘get’ it?”

“I’m an only child. My parents want me to be able to run their business and be perfect. It’s like if I’m not doing exactly what they want ─ I’m a mistake.” Hamilton put his phone down. “Fuck that shit. It’s not like I’m ever going to make them happy anyway.”

“I don’t know, I think sometimes you don’t realize how smart you are.”

He scowled. “Sure, right.”

“I’m serious, Bradshaw.”

“Maybe I’d try more if everything wasn’t so you know...much.” To emphasize ‘much’, he waved one of his hands, fingers loose.

“Yeah.” I nodded, but I knew I didn’t completely understand where he was coming from. My parents were the supportive, but they didn’t necessarily push me to succeed as much as I do myself. I’m naturally driven to a fault. I’ve never dealt with much external pressure since my toughest critic was myself. I should’ve figured from the way that his parents deemed tutoring as the first step of academic rehab, that they were controlling type. I’d never met them, but I could imagine them as I imagined most Warwick parents. Tall and prim, wearing custom tailored suits except on Casual Fridays where they decided it would be fine to go without the tie for just one day. Maintaining contact with their children primarily through credit card numbers and monthly family dinners. Taking spurious vacations to their house in Poconos or the Hamptons when the pressure of city life got to be too much. I personally hoped I would never have to meet them.

Hamilton was still looking at me, wetting his lips before blurting out: “We should hang out more.”

“I already said I’d go to a party with you if I had time.”

“I know. I guess I mean like, outside of all this,” he said, raising his arms up and spreading his fingers wide to gesture to the rest of the library. The sun outside had lowered considerably and in the afternoon light, I realized Hamilton’s eyes were still slightly blown and dark. My suspicions from earlier turned into more of a realization that he’d been high the entire session. “Outside of Warwick and everyone here. We could get coffee or something. Pastries. You could set up your little tutoring gig in a coffee shop, couldn’t you?” He paused. “I’d pay for you.”

I tensed again at the offer. The social barrier between the two of us felt as though it was being strained as Hamilton kept putting the weight of his offers against it. It was uncomfortable and a part of me, mainly my pride, wanted to push him back onto his own side and away from mine. The rest of me was starting to understand. There was a pressure in my chest that had been building over the past forty-five minutes, growing every moment Hamilton had held my hand and kept me under his gaze. That part of me was pushing too ─ slipping it’s way between Hamilton and my pride, trying to make room for something more. Something new.

I shut my eyes and breathed deeply before adjusting my glasses once again.

“Yeah, maybe sometime. Right now though, we should get back to work.”

Hamilton scoffed, but sounded almost hopeful. “Yeah. Work.”  


 

###


End file.
